Dropped Down a Well
by Mo1881
Summary: Doctor WhoTorchwood fiction. Not all the consequences of the Master's reign over Earth were undone. So how far can the apple fall from its tree? Spoilers for end of Season Three at least. !- Rating lowered from M to T Reviews more than welcome.
1. Part 1

Spoilers: Oh, for just about everything. Here be spoilers, I say. Especially to you folk who are just getting to watch the series on the CBC. If you don't wanna know, stop reading... now.

Authors Note: I'm neither a "shipper" nor am I gaga for the idea of Time Lord babies. But, the Master was clearly getting some in LotTL (see, first spoiler... told you to stop reading), so I think this is plausible. There may be more of this. I hope there is anyway, if time allows. Oh, and this is my first.

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Doctor Who, or Torchwood. And if I did they'd probably fail miserably. So I'm just borrowing them from the BBC. It's better this way. Really.

**Dropped Down a Well**

She clutched the swaddled bundle to her chest, ducking against the sleet that stung the pale flesh of her cheeks turning it an angry pink. The infant in her arms, barely a week old, fussed slightly as a wet and frozen piece of her mother's blond hair drooped forward onto her warm little forehead. She looked up into the dark sky as she came into glow of the Millennium Centre. This is where it would happen. This is where it would _have to happen_. She shifted the bundle to one arm, and reached into the pocket of her wool coat with the other – she felt the cold metal of the single-shot pearl-handled revolver, and a tear slid down her numb cheek.

"Lucy!" The voice came from behind, muffled by the cold wind. Lucy's back straightened as she clung to her little girl with both arms.

"Lucy, you don't have to do this!" She turned to see the source of the Welsh accented voice. Warm golden eyes wide and concerned watched her under dark sleet-matted hair. Her body moved stiffly – part tension of the moment, part cold, part fear.

"Why?" Lucy found her voice but it came out as a croak. "So you can study her? Raise her in some cold laboratory? Constantly reminding her of… of…" She couldn't finish the unbearable thought. One year and eighteen months – the best and worst time of her life.

"Remind her of what, Lucy?" The woman asked. She genuinely didn't know. No one knew. Twelve months erased in a cyclone, and she trapped at the eye of it. She clung to the infant, the last remaining piece she had of him.

"Lucy, why don't we go inside. It's cold. We can talk this over. I can help you." The woman continued moving forward. She was only a few yards away from Lucy now. "Let's have a nice warm cup of tea, and we'll figure this out. You and me."

Lucy tightened her grip on the infant, backing away. A sob escaped her, tears now flowing down her face. The tiny baby began to cry, sensing her mother's distress.

Suddenly the atmosphere shifted. The wind and sleet stopped, and an eerie quiet descended on them – only the child's sniffling could be heard. The air was strangely static, as if every atom hung in some sort of stasis. This was the time. This was the place.

"Lucy, please." A new voice, this one male. Lucy's heart leaped into her throat. He knew.

"You." She gasped when his clean cut face came into view. "You know. You remember."

"I do." He answered, his voice smooth, calm, and comforting. "And I won't let them. She'll be fine."

Lucy hesitated. She had loved him. Despite what others said, she was certain of that. But then there was this writhing little creature in her womb, and something changed. Something made her destroy that which she loved so much… for its own protection. She winced as that sharp and surprising crack again echoed through her memory.

"Lucy…" the man's voice had now the underpinning of panic. Lucy realized that she had shifted the little bundle to one side and once again had the pearl-handled revolver in her hand. She stared at the tiny infant with tear filled eyes. The wind had picked up, and they were all bathed in a strange aqua glow.

"Lucy, bring her here. You don't want to do this. Please!" The man's voice was desperate, shouting above the thunder that came with the ionized air exploding around them.

"No." Lucy said. Her voice was calm now. She knew what she had to do. The confusion was gone.

As gently as putting her in a crib, she put the baby down on the cold wet ground and stepped away. The little one only wailed briefly as she was separated one last time from her mother.

"Lucy, no!" he screamed. All at once a beam of light came streaking down from the heavens, a massive amount of energy discharging from the rift as it shifted causing a temporal earthquake. Lucy raised the revolver, pointing it first at the man, and then at herself. Even though she had prepared for it, even though she was expecting it, that last deafening crack still surprised her.

**First and Last**

Captain Jack Harkness stood in the morgue of Torchwood Three, staring at the body of Lucy Saxon. He had sent the rest of his team home hours ago, telling them to get some sleep and get warm. Although he could have easily waited in his office for UNIT officials to arrive, he just didn't feel right leaving the Master's final victim alone – however posthumously he took her. The only one who insisted on remaining was Ianto, manning the front entrance. For this, and for the comfort after, Jack was grateful.

Heavy footfalls tinny against the metal grating of the floor announced UNIT's presence before Ianto's soft musical lilt announced them. Jack continued to stare at the body until he heard someone clear their throat with impatience. He glanced up only briefly to see a blond man, dressed in a black uniform and built like a linebacker, standing at the head of the autopsy table.

"You've come for the body." Jack said. It wasn't a question, and he wouldn't pretend that he didn't expect them.

"Yes." The linebacker answered. "And the child?"

"Gone." Jack's voice caught as he said it, somewhere between anger and anguish. He remembered as the flash shot down to the very spot where the infant lay. The energy discharge had nearly knocked them off their feet, and only after it dissipated did any of them realize what had happened. Lucy lay dead by her own hand, and the child had completely disappeared. Lucy may have been the Master's final victim, but as far as Jack was concerned the child was the newly-formed UNIT's first.

"What do you mean, _gone_?" The blond man asked, impatience unmasked in his voice.

Jack finally looked up and fixed his gaze on the blond man. The darkness and anger in Jack's eyes almost caused him to step back, but his military training kept him rooted.

"I mean, she's gone." Jack said firmly. "Vaporized. Or swallowed up by the Rift. Both worst case scenarios. Our Medical Examiner has pronounced the child dead." Jack zipped up the body bag holding Lucy, walked through the ranks of UNIT personnel and into the Hub. "Take her, and get the hell out of here."

**An Unlikely Recipient**

A middle aged man stumbled drunk through the sooty streets. He was pretty sure he was more or less pointed towards home. Actually, he wasn't sure at all… the only thing he was sure of is that the buildings around him had turned to jelly, and they were undulating suspiciously. Somewhere on the next street a car backfired sending a cloud of steam billowing over the buildings, followed by the curses of the owners.

"EXTRA EXTRA!" cried the late-night edition paper boy under the gaslights. "Solar storm hits atmosphere later this evening. All eyes to the skies! Hey mister, wanna read about the storm… it's gonna be a big'un!" The bright blue eyes shone against the young lad's coal dusted face. "Mister Morgan! Lookit ye. You're in a right state, you are! Jimmy, take o'er. I need teh get Mister Morgan home before he gedshimslef turned back to the pub."

The young lad, once satisfied that Jimmy could man the paper stand, took one of Morgan's arms and hefted himself under the older man's armpit to keep him steady.

"I know where I'm goin', Joseph." Slurred Morgan, his boozy breath hitting Joseph in the face.

"Sure you do, Mister." Joseph said jovially, trying not to gag from the smell. "I'll just help you 'ome nonetheless. Rather see you safe than robbed or worse. People out there just ain't as kind as I am." Joseph plodded through the dusty streets, scowling protectively at the staring passers by. When he got Morgan home, he would make sure he got to bed, and turned on his side as to not swallow his own tongue. Then he would help himself to enough coins to buy him and Jimmy a good supper – no more, no less. Morgan would remember little of it in the end, and wouldn't question the missing copper from his coin purse.

As Joseph rounded the corner, almost losing Morgan in the process, the gaslights were turned down and bright patches of aurora began appearing in the sky. The solar storm had begun in all its splendor. Blues, oranges and greens lit up the sky, and the soot covered faces of those who came out to watch the spectacle. It wasn't often that such anomalies came to Victoria Minor, and when they did it was a cause for awe and celebration. Joseph struggled to look up while still carting Morgan down the street. Just to the end and he could unburden himself of the poor man.

Suddenly, the air went still and cold, and a horrendously bright aqua light split the darkness of the street. Morgan started and Joseph nearly dropped him. Just as quickly as the light began, they were plunged into darkness once more. Joseph and Morgan stood silent, not daring to speak until the gaslights were turned up. Joseph let out a relieved but nervous laugh.

"Quite the treat tonight, eh Mister Morgan." Joseph chuckled. "'Aven't seen an aurora quite like that before."

Joseph began to heft Morgan's weight again, and as quickly as he could cover the last couple of metres before leaning in to open the door of the drunk man's home. It was a good thing he heard the gurgle, or he would have stepped right on it. "Well, I'll be…" Joseph muttered, shifting Morgan against the wall.

The young lad squatted down to see what he had almost trodden underfoot. On Morgan's front stoop was a bundle of white fabric with something inside. Joseph lifted the bundle gently in his arms and looked down at the big bright eyes staring back at him from the clean little porcelain face. "Wouldya look at that, Mister Morgan." He cried in shock. "Who in their right mind would leave a baby on your doorstep!?"

**A Story of Sixes**

There hadn't been a time since they'd met him that Jack and Martha wouldn't come running the moment they heard the grinding of the TARDIS engines. Today was the first exception. Instead all they could do was sit nervously, glancing at each other and then quickly away as if it were some sort of embarrassing accident. Finally Jack just stared at the ground. The blue police box gradually came into view out of the ether, flashing light on top first, then the edges beginning to define themselves, and finally solidifying itself into the surroundings, becoming part of their reality.

Jack and Martha stayed sitting by the fountain, unwilling to speed up what was certainly going to be an unpleasant situation. It had been 6 months since Lucy Saxon's body was turned over to UNIT, and a week more than that since Martha had called the Doctor, sooner than either of them could have expected. He should have been here long before this, something had gone very wrong.

Jack's eyes remained fixed to the ground, while Martha stared at the blue box. He hadn't come out yet, which was a bit odd. Normally, she would have expected him to come running out and rattling off plans and factoids just as quickly as his feet moved. Finally, after several agonizing minutes, the door cracked open. The tall thin man, blue suit, brown overcoat, and disheveled hair, exited the box with hands in pockets, trailed by a buxom redhead. That must be Donna, Martha thought. She'd known he'd picked up a new traveling companion, and was somewhat relieved by it. Uncharacteristically stoic, the Doctor trod towards them.

"He's here." Martha said to Jack, as if he already didn't know. Jack's shoulders tensed. He'd had 6 long months to get himself really really angry about this, and he knew if he looked the Doctor in the eye he just might be denied that anger and the courage to turn it into words.

The Doctor cast Martha a sad gaze before turning his attention to Jack, who still refused to look at him. He put a hand on the other man's shoulder. "I'm sorry." His voice cracked a little, he cleared his throat. "I'm so sorry."

"Where the hell were you." Jack hissed through clenched teeth. The Doctor removed his hand and stepped back. Jack finally looked up, anger clear on his face.

Donna stepped forward, irritated. "He tried." She said, stopping herself when she realized that this was probably best sorted between them. She stepped closer to Martha to give them room.

The Doctor looked down at his sneakers. Breathed in… 2… 3… 4… 5…, and breathed out 2… 3… 4… 5… Jack had 6 months to be angry about this, surely he could spare an extra 10 seconds for the Doctor to formulate an answer for what – for him and Donna anyway – had been mere days. As his exhale finished, he raised his head, squared his shoulders, and tried.

"I…" Was all that got out before the Doctor looked down at the ground again. Alright, try again. "I don't know what happened."

Jack looked at him surprised. The Doctor always had an answer for everything. He'd never seen him struggle with something so much. "What do you mean, you _don't know what happened_?" He asked, anger abating but still there.

"The TARDIS wouldn't materialize. No matter what I did. You would have thought I was trying to cross time streams or something equally catastrophic. But that's it. I could not physically materialize here… not 6 months ago… not even 6 days ago. This is the soonest point I could land." The Doctor looked up to the sky and pondered his use of _soonest_… didn't seem to be the right choice of word but it would do. Contemplating the oddities of human grammar was preferable to thinking too hard about the situation.

He knew the next question he needed to ask, but was not sure he wanted to hear the answer. He already knew the end result of it anyway, why know the mechanics? That niggling presence had been in the back of his mind for 3 months on the Valiant, not fully understanding it until Martha had rung him. Really, he should have known… but it was just so different. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before. He'd felt it all throughout his efforts to land here. He had worked for hours, Donna helping where she could, the two of them showered by sparks and subjected to near electrocution. It was only when the ship had threatened to tear itself apart that he had stopped, drifting in the vortex for days before he allowed them to become part of events this far down the line. That's when the tiny spark of consciousness that had been playing at the back of his mind was suddenly snuffed out.

Finally, he screwed up enough courage to at least state the outcome as he believed it to be. "They're both dead, aren't they."

"Yeah." Jack's expression softened. "Lucy shot herself, and the child was swallowed up by a temporal earthquake."

The Doctor swallowed hard. "I want to find out what happened."

"What do you mean, _find out what happened_?" said Jack, repeating the Doctor for the second time. "I just told you."

"I mean, I want to find out exactly what happened." The Doctor said firmly. "Why the TARDIS refused to land, how Lucy knew about the temporal earthquake. Everything." The Doctor was speaking rapidly now, pacing back and forth. "There's something else going on here. Something we don't know about." He stopped and look Jack dead in the eye. "This should not have happened. And the least that I can do is figure out why."

Jack had been right about one thing. Looking the Doctor in the eye, his anger bled away and a small grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. Six months he'd agonized over what had happened, and had been prepared to verbally spar it out with this man. In just under 6 minutes, the Doctor had turned that all on its ear. Jack put an arm around the Doctor's shoulders and, much to his surprise, planted a big kiss on his cheek.

"Let's go then." He said guiding the Doctor towards Torchwood Three. "_Mi casa es su casa_."


	2. Part 2

Spoilers: Oh, for just about everything. Here be spoilers, I say. Especially to you folk who are just getting to watch the series on the CBC. If you don't wanna know, stop reading... now.

Authors Note: Ah, update earlier than expected. Again, hopefully there will be more time allowing. If someone could bottle time and sell it... I'd be first in line! Thank-you for the reviews thus far. I appreciate the feedback! Enjoy :)

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Doctor Who, or Torchwood. And if I did they'd probably fail miserably. So I'm just borrowing them from the BBC. It's better this way. Really.

**Like Clockwork**

The door of Morgan's Mechanical Shop clattered open, and Joseph looked up from his tinkering in annoyance as the sopping wet figure of Winifred came in from the rain.

"Freddie! Where have you been!" He exclaimed as she shook off her water-logged wool coat and grabbed a clean rag to blot the dripping ends of her black hair.

"Swimming up the New Clyde." She said facetiously. Joseph looked her over in disapproval. Men's trousers, men's shirt, men's suspenders. Mister Morgan was going to throw a fit.

"I'm 21. I think I can make my own fashion decisions." She replied as if reading his mind – though it wasn't so much telepathic ability as it was having had this conversation _several_ times before.

"He's going to have a stroke." Joseph said pointing a spanner at her.

"You try wearing a corset. See how long you last." She finished patting dry the dripping tendrils of hair, and sat at her workbench. "Anyway, to actually answer your question, I was in the square listening to the Mayor's announcement. He has the Luddites riled up." She picked up her pencil and bent over her notebook, scratching out some calculations.

Joseph watched her for a moment, her black hair was pulled up in a messy bun, damp curly strands escaping the mass. Twenty-one years ago today the solar storm had hit Victoria Minor, and he had found Winifred, just a baby, on Mister Morgan's doorstep. They had taken the wee one to Nurse Peabody to be looked over. Perfectly healthy, save for an odd but seemingly harmless birth defect. In the swaddle was a piece of paper with her name written on it, and a silver locket. Mister Morgan had taken the event as a sign of fate, dried himself up (after a number of false starts), and hired Joseph to work in his mechanical shop. Joseph had only been nine years old then.

Winifred had been left to the local orphanage, but Morgan had remained attentive to her as she grew up – bringing her small mechanical toys that she immediately took apart, and eventually learned to put together again. When she was too old for the orphanage, Morgan took her in. He indulged her aptitude for mechanics and mathematics by having her work in the shop with Joseph, who immediately took a shining to her. She was eccentric, throwing off the confines of traditional women's dress and opting for more comfortable menswear, getting a tattoo, and able to hold her liquor at the pub as well as any man. Joseph had never really approved, but… He felt the colour raise in his cheeks as he remembered the intense but ultimately unsuccessful romance they had shared a few years ago.

Winifred looked up from her scratching and gazed at him curiously. Joseph realized he'd been staring for a few minutes and his cheeks began to burn even more.

He glanced over at the paper sitting on the counter. The front page had a big picture of a clockwork droid with the Mayor's arm draped around it. The headline read CLOCKWORK DROIDS TO MONITOR TRAFFIC INFRACTIONS – Joseph forced a yawn to cover his embarrassment. He had seen more gripping headlines in his day as a paper boy. The droid wore a badge – New Oxford's Traffic Patrol, the first non-biological police force on Victoria Minor. "What do you think?" He asked.

"Depends who gets the repair contract. If Uncle gets it, I'm all for it. Though Uncle is going to have to expand if he does get it."

"I've heard mutterings of artificial intelligence." Joseph fiddled with the cog he'd been working on all morning, filing in between the teeth so that it would fit inside the portable calculator he was repairing. As portable models went, this one was pretty advanced. Small and compact at 6 inches wide, it could calculate square roots. Most square root calculators were twice the size.

"They're building a huge unit in New Berlin." Freddie said, looking back down at her calculations. _New_ this, _New_ that… the denizens of Victoria Minor certainly lacked creativity in naming their cities and landmarks. "Bought out the whole city to do it. The question is how they are going to transmit the signals to the droids."

"I heard magnetics." Joseph offered. Freddie sniggered.

"Who told you that? Ada?"

Joseph was stung, though he shouldn't have been. He knew Freddie and Ada did not get along, and Freddie didn't give up an opportunity to express her distain for the young and wealthy mathematician. "What? It's possible."

"Yeah. If you're within a half-mile of the AI engine. A magnetic signal strong enough to reach New Oxford would have to align all the dipoles between here and there, and everyone's flatware would fly down the signal pathway all the way to New Berlin." Winifred explained patiently. "That's Ada's problem. She's all theory and no practicality."

"And just what would your solution be, Miss Genius?" Joseph asked sarcastically. Winifred's gaze narrowed in annoyance. She had never been able to afford the kind of education, and therefore credentials, that Ada Lovelace enjoyed. As a consequence she had a difficult time getting people to take her seriously.

"Electronics." Winifred stated matter-of-factly.

"Electronics don't work on Victoria Minor. The atmosphere is too highly charged and-"

"Everything shorts out right away. Yes, I know, Joseph." Winifred was annoyed at being talked to like a two year old. "But what if we worked at it backwards? What if we just harnessed the natural charge in the atmosphere, allowing the short circuit to power the device rather than trying to force new energy through the circuit against it? It would be like controlling the flow of a river by using locks and dams."

"But we already use damper switches for electric light bulbs, and they're cumbersome and inefficient."

Winifred sighed. "Just because-" She was interrupted by Mister Morgan bursting through the shop door.

Morgan, graying at the temples, was waving a damp packet of paper in the air. "We got it! We got it!" He cried.

Winifred's face lit up and Joseph jumped out of his chair. "The droid repair contract?" They said in unison.

Morgan grinned and nodded, holding his arms open and beckoning them over. He wrapped his arms around Winifred and Joseph, squeezing them tight against him. "Morgan's Mechanical Shop is about to get the shot in the arm it needs." He released them and stepped back, looking at them solemnly.

"But don't say anything yet. The contract is going to be announced next week at the Mayor's celebration." Winifred's face fell. "Don't give me that look, Freddie. Yes you are going, and yes you are going to dress like the young woman you are. Don't think I haven't noticed your outlandish garb today."

"Yes, Uncle." Winifred said quietly. Mister Morgan put his hand under her chin and raised it up so that their eyes met.

"Freddie, you are a brilliant and beautiful young woman. I see you brilliant every day, let me see you beautiful once and awhile too."

Freddie beamed at him and threw her arms around the old man's neck in a great hug. "Alright Uncle, just this once."

**Q&A**

Donna, Martha and Gwen had sat in the conference room at Torchwood Three, heads bent over their coffee. The Doctor and Jack were in the Hub, analyzing the data from the temporal earthquake six months ago. The conversation was escalating, each spouting incomprehensible gibberish – the language of temporal mechanics lost on the three bystanders.

"Is he always like that? And do you ever understand him?" Gwen asked. Martha and Donna nodded and then shook their heads in unison.

Donna turned to Martha. "So you were her doctor then?" She asked.

"Yeah. UNIT hired me after I had passed my exams. She was in their psych ward after killing the…" Martha stopped herself before saying his name, covering her error with a sip of coffee. "Harold Saxon. He'd driven her absolutely mad. I was there to provide prenatal care, and some postnatal care. I thought she was just going to give birth and the child would be given to a proper family to be cared for. But then talk of experiments began."

"And that's when she called you." Donna turned to Gwen.

"Yes. We tried to negotiate with UNIT, but before we reached an agreement Lucy had escaped… and you know the rest."

The three women sat in silence for awhile, staring past the misty surfaces of their coffee. Donna was the first to break the silence.

"Why don't you ever talk about it? Any of you?"

Gwen locked eyes with Martha, hoping an answer was forthcoming. She knew that something horrible had happened in between the three Toclofane killing the President, and Lucy assassinating the Prime Minister. She knew that the rift had been unusually active for months after that, as if a fresh gash had been sliced through space and time. But Jack refused to elaborate on what he only referred to as "the year of hell." Martha didn't offer any more than Jack had when she arrived.

"Because, it never happened." Martha answered.

"That's all he ever says too." Donna replied referring to the Doctor. She continued, frustrated. "But something did happen, didn't it? I may not have noticed the Cybermen, the Daleks, the Slitheen, or the Sycorax – but I'd like to think I've become a little more aware in the last little while. I can't put my finger on what it was… but something else happened beyond three metal balls slicing and dicing the President and a mad woman shooting her husband."

"All those storms." Gwen put in. "The sudden rise in post-traumatic stress disorder for no apparent reason. People disappearing without a trace. Miscarriages. Terminal cancer patients suddenly cured." Gwen decided to stop listing there. She had a file in her desk inches thick of all the strange things that had occurred after Jack came back from the Valiant. She thought back to the day of the temporal earthquake… the desperate and confused woman clutching her infant as if it were her own sanity – both she'd given up. "Lucy remembered."

Martha shrugged, not making eye contact. "She was there…"

"And it never happened." Gwen finished for her as Jack and the Doctor entered the room.

"How'd you boys make out?" Martha asked, thankful for the interruption.

The Doctor and Jack practically scrambled over each other to explain.

"After the events on the Valiant, massive…" Jack searched for an appropriate metaphor. "… lacerations…" He rolled the word around in his mind. It would do. "… were left in space and time."

"And all those lacerations needed to heal over." The Doctor continued. "But it was a messy process. Rather than heal over, they scarred over with surplus events, redundant timelines, huge gulfs…"

"And all these anomalies built up pressure, right here at the rift. So not only were two dimensions grinding against each other, but so was all the flotsam and jetsam left over from the lacerations healing over…"

"So like pus in a boil it accumulated until the whole thing burst over Cardiff 6 months ago. The pressure released, the dimensions shifted, and the result was a massive discharge of energy that ripped through 54 centuries." The Doctor finished.

Donna, Martha and Gwen looked back and forth between them once the barrage of mixed metaphors ended.

"So how did Lucy know about the quake?" Gwen asked.

"And why wouldn't the TARDIS land here?" Donna asked.

The Doctor pushed a hand through his hair. "Welll… we don't know exactly." The three women looked at him blankly. "But!" The Doctor continued, "All that flotsam and jetsam is gone now. The rift has been as quiet as it's ever been since the quake happened. It all had to go somewhere, so perhaps the answer lies 54 centuries down the line." A broad grin spread across the Doctor's face. "I think we ought to go for a visit!"


	3. Part 3

Spoilers: Well, if you read the first two parts, I'm sure you're not worried about spoilers at this point.

Author's Note: Thanks again for the review. I hope that you continue to enjoy!

Disclaimer: All that stuff I said about not owning Doctor Who or Torchwood? Still true. Much to the BBC's pleasure, I'm sure.

**It's kind of like when the steering goes out on your car… only worse.**

Martha watched as the time rotor ascended and descended in its steady hypnotic rhythm. The TARDIS shuddered a bit as the Doctor and Jack tried to pilot it along the path of the quake. The journey was taking longer than usual… but longer was a very relative term when you were traveling many hundreds of years into the future.

She was thinking about her short time at UNIT, with Lucy and the baby. She remembered the circumstances of the delivery – Lucy screaming hysterically, fighting against her restraints, with armed UNIT personnel surrounding her. The whole scene had been positively barbaric. Amongst it all, a healthy baby girl had been born. Martha had been given the task of assessing the child medically. She would take the baby from Lucy's arms, promising each time this would be the last test, and each time knowing that was a lie.

The child was surprisingly human. Her temperature only slightly below normal, her body a little smaller than the average infant. The only clue to her unique parentage, aside from almost incomprehensible DNA results, was revealed by an MRI performed on her second day of life – the presence of a second, but not operational, heart. The child was also very bright and responsive, gripping Martha's finger when she was listening to her chest with the stethoscope, trying to grab onto anything bright and shiny dangled before her, and reaching towards things she wanted rather than just general fussing.

Martha remembered when the news came to Lucy that the baby was going to be taken away from her. It had been heartbreaking, Lucy begging Martha to let her hold the child one last time. Martha could only look at her sadly and shake her head. She had been ordered to put Lucy in restraints that night. With Torchwood's negotiations with UNIT failing, and the Doctor still absent, guilt had driven Martha to leave just one restraint a little looser than the others.

Tom had noticed a change in Martha over the intervening months. The sad look in her eyes, the effort it took her to get out of bed in the morning. So when she had told him that she was going on a trip, he didn't even ask why. He simply kissed her on the forehead. "I may not know everything about the great Martha Jones." He said looking at her fondly, "But I do know that she needs a vacation." Not much of a vacation, she sighed. But perhaps there would be some answers to salve her soul.

"Ground control to Martha Jones." Jack's voice broke through her thoughts. He and the Doctor were looking at her. She blinked twice.

"Oh, sorry. I was miles away." She said focusing on the two men at the console. Jack had resumed checking the readings on the monitors. The Doctor was watching Martha with concern.

"We're almost ready to materialize." Jack went on, "It's a little fuzzy exactly where though. That quake really kicked up a lot of interference. You might want to hold onto something." Martha gripped the rail surrounding the console. The TARDIS engines began their characteristic wheezing noise, and the console room shuddered. Finally, with a great jolt, the TARDIS landed and everything went quiet.

"Ow!" came Donna's voice from outside the console room. "How about warning the rest of us before you do something like that!" She and Gwen entered, Gwen rubbing her neck. They had all elected to accompany the Doctor to the 75th century – the calculated end of the quake's path of devastation. They hoped that they could cover more ground and get as much information from the locals as possible. This was Gwen's first trip in the TARDIS, and her initiation was typically turbulent.

"Are the landings always this rough?" she asked to no one in particular.

The Doctor was fiddling with a knob on the console, a perplexed look on his face. "Oh dear." He said.

"What?" asked Martha.

"The helmic regulator is… broken."

"And what does that mean?" asked Gwen.

"Welll… You know when the steering goes out on your car?" the Doctor asked.

Gwen nodded.

"It's like that. Only worse. The helmic regulator manipulates the gravitational forces in the vortex resulting in a non-zero dimensional shift which pushes the TARDIS from one time stream to another."

"Like steering a car? Or a boat?" Gwen asked.

"Yes! A boat. You're catching on Gwen Cooper, very good." The Doctor smiled. "Hasn't been this touchy since Harry Sullivan cranked it too far…" The Doctor drifted off into a momentary nostalgic silence, and then continued abruptly. "Basically, trying to pilot the TARDIS at the moment would be like trying to go to sea without a rudder." He caught everyone's worried looks. "Well, don't look so worried. We're in the 75th century, it can't be that difficult to find parts!"

Gwen looked at him dubiously. "Don't you have spare parts?"

"Nah. Ran out of spare parts a long time ago." He cocked his head towards the console. "Been cobbling together parts from various centuries for ages. Now, enough standing around and gabbing, you lot. Allons-y!"

The Doctor bounded to the TARDIS doors, flung them open, and stepped outside, Jack, Martha, Donna and Gwen on his heels. They nearly collided with him and each other as he came to a sudden stop.

They had stepped out onto a street that looked like it was eons earlier than the 75th century. Men wore top hats and carried walking sticks, women wore elaborate long skirts, and the air was grey with coal dust and steam. Gaslights illuminated the dim façade of the stone buildings, and somewhere in the distance a boy's voice cried, "EXTRA! EXTRA!"

"Oh dear." The Doctor breathed. Getting parts for the helmic regulator might prove to be a much taller order than he had originally thought.

**Pretty in Pink**

Winifred was cranky. It was three days since Uncle had burst into the shop with the news, and she had been up to her elbows in clockwork droid specs so she could at least be somewhat prepared when the contract finally took effect. To make matters worse, she had been unable to sleep for the past two nights – she lay in her bed listening to the hiss of steam and the ticking of clockwork on which the entire planet of Victoria Minor ran, and the steady drum beat of her own heart in thudding in her ears. Something was amiss, planting angst at the back of her mind.

Perhaps it was the increased Luddite protests that were going on throughout the city. The Luddite's name derived from a similar movement in the distant history of their ancestors – a movement against technology because of its consequences on society. Where the law makers of New Oxford saw the use of traffic control droids as being the first step in truly objective law enforcement, the Luddite movement saw it as the beginning of a draconian legal system lacking the empathy and mercy of a human mind. But such philosophical disagreements rarely bothered Winifred, so it didn't seem likely that this was the cause of her new found restlessness. Rather, a feeling that something was about to shift on Victoria Minor… something bigger than a debate about clockwork droids issuing traffic tickets.

An east wind was blowing, it seemed.

She rested her elbows on her desk and peered through sleepy eyes at the materials list in her hands – the words and pictures completely ignored her attempt at concentration and opted to continue to swim around the page.

Just as Winifred had finally convinced the diagrams to straighten up and fly right, the door to the shop swung open and, in a rustle of pink taffeta, Ada Lovelace swept in followed by Joseph. She had been flitting around Morgan's Mechanical Shop, and around Joseph in particular, since he had let slip the news of the contract to her. Winifred glanced up, rolled her eyes at Joseph, and pointedly ignored Ada.

Ada, strategically oblivious to being ignored, glided over to Winifred's desk and leaned in, blond curls hanging over the paper that Winifred was attempting to read.

"Winifred, dear girl, what are you doing?" Ada asked. Winifred lowered the paper slowly and looked up at her. Ada stepped back eyes wide at the sight of the darks circles under Winifred's eyes. "Oh dear, Winifred, you look horrible. Have you been getting much sleep lately?"

Winifred put on a thin smile, "No. Someone has to make sure we're ready when those droids are deployed and start breaking down, so I am making sure that I am prepared." She glared at Joseph – because as much as Ada had been flitting around him, _he_ had most certainly been flitting around Ada.

Ada raised an eyebrow at Winifred. Her father had been the brilliant mind behind the creation of these particular clockwork droids, designed to work in the harsh atmosphere of Victoria Minor. "You believe that there will be so many problems with them?" She asked, a slight edge to her voice.

Truth was, everything broke down at some point, either as a result of wear and tear or vandalism, and not necessarily a flaw in design. But Winifred had seemed to strike a chord in her rival and wasn't going to waste the opportunity to dig in a little farther.

"Well, the Mayor wouldn't have drawn up such an involved repair contract if he didn't think that there might be…" Winifred paused and looked away, making it look like she was choosing her words carefully, and glanced up at Ada again. "Problems."

Ada's lips pursed in annoyance and she sucked in her breath to say something, but Joseph intervened.

"Now ladies, I'm sure that there will be nothing wrong with these droids, and that all that will be required from us is _routine maintenance_." He deftly slipped a hand around Ada's tiny corseted waist and drew her closer to him. "Now, Freddie is obviously very tired, and I'm sure that she hasn't the slightest intention of taking out her poor mood on us."

Winifred's eyes went wide, and she felt the colour raise in her cheeks. "Right!" Winifred managed to choke out, standing up from her desk and grabbing her coat. "Now if you would excuse me, I'm going to go out and get some air. Joseph… Ada."

Winifred stomped out of the shop, leaving Ada and Joseph to their… _flitting_.

**Breaking the First Law**

Feet shuffled along the stone-lined tunnel of New Oxford's underground railway. A phlegm filled cough, a trip, and a harsh _shhhhh_ could be heard in the otherwise silent darkness. Two dark figures made their way along the tracks, hugging tight against the wall of the tunnel.

"Don't drop it!" the first said, a tall skinny man with a cloth cap on his head. "You'll blow us up along with the tunnel."

"Why are we doin' this anyway?" said the other, shorter and plump. He tried to ignore the steady _drip drip_ of moisture coming down from the wet ground of the city above. He really should have gone to the bathroom before they came down here.

"Because, if we blow up the tunnel, the trains will have to stop, right?" The plump man nodded, forgetting it was too dark for his companion to see him. "If the trains stop, more people will want to use the steam taxis." The skinny man went on anyway. "Which means, we'll get more customers, and we'll be in the money."

"But won't they realize it was us?"

"Nah. The Luddites have been raising such a stink that everyone will be looking at them before us."

"Ah, I gotcha. You're a smart one, you are." The plump man stopped abruptly. "Hey, you do know where we're goin', right?"

"Of course I know where we're goin'. Now keep walking. It's another yard and a half."

The two men hugged the wall tightly, pressed up against the stone for both guidance and support. They were both taken by surprise when the wall seemed to give way, and they stumbled into the black opening away from the tunnel.

"Uh… where are we?" The plump man asked, looking around but only seeing the inky blackness around them.

"Shhh!" The skinny one replied. They both listened intently, ears straining. The _drip drip_ of the tunnel was now accompanied by another sound. An insistent tick _tick tick tick tick_.

"What's that?!" cried the plump one, fighting the urge to run.

"I…" the other began to answer, but the answer turned into a scream of pain. Just as suddenly as the screaming began, it ended with the sound of bones cracking and breaking. The plump man dropped to the ground, hoping that whatever it was would simply miss him. Feeling around he found the still form of his partner in crime. He patted his hand up the man's skinny torso, shoulders, neck… when he got to where the head should have been, his touch was greeted by a wet and gooey mess.

The plump man's eyes went wide with terror as his grip let go of the bomb and he shuffled on his belly back towards where he thought they had come. The ticking rang in his ears, followed by gears turning, and finally cold metal gripped the back of his neck, pressing his face down into the ground. He let out a sob as the grip tightened - not so much because of the pain as the knowledge of what was surely coming next. A sickening pop was the last thing he ever heard.


	4. Part 4

**AN: **Whew, sorry it's been so long - I hope you are all still out there. Between moving, graduating, trying to find a job, family gatherings, breakups, etc. etc. this has been percolating in my head for so long I finally just had to get it out. It is probably better for it though. A special thank-you to the kind reviewer who caught my UNIT foible (and especially silly me since I'm a Classic Series fan, and my little brother is a Pertwee fan!). Did a little retconning with Martha this chapter to fix that up. I hope you all enjoy this latest installment.**  
**

**Psychedelic Dickens **

The Doctor grabbed a discarded newspaper off the street and held it up to the others with a big grin. "See, New Victoria, 75th century. Told you."

"This is the 75th century?" asked Gwen incredulously. "It's more like Dickensian London on crack."

"Welll, it sort of is really. Was first inhabited by people from 16th century Earth, got a bit of an update from some Victorian Era humans, and then…"

"Hey, I've heard of this place." Jack interjected. "This is where they think the people from the Roanoke Colony disappeared to, and then later the crew of the Mary Celeste…"

"Might have even been the odd hermit living in the Siberian forests during the Tunguska event that wound up here too." The Doctor continued. "The atmosphere here is so highly charged that nothing electrical will work, so everything is mechanical. And mechanical technology evolves at a very slow pace, it can only get bigger. Everything here is steam power, gas lights, and old Victorian ideals… welll, with a little more flexibility I think. There were some non-human species inhabiting this planet last I heard… Don't you start!" The Doctor finished after seeing a goofy grin spread across Jack's face.

"What have I done to deserve such a reputation?" Jack sighed.

"Earn, Jack, earn." Muttered the Doctor flipping through the newspaper. "Oooh, what's this?"

The Doctor flipped to a grainy black and white photograph of a clockwork droid and let out a low whistle. "Hallo again… gotta say I still think you are gorgeous."

"And you say I'm bad." Said Jack, leaning in to get a look at the picture. "Clockwork traffic droids to be deployed after Mayoral party." He read over the Doctor's shoulder. "Although the new traffic guardians of New Oxford are to be officially deployed in 3 days after the Mayor's party, unofficially they are already handing out traffic citations to our citizens. While the controversial law enforcement unit has been the subject of very public debate, to whom the maintenance of these droids has been entrusted remains shrouded in secrecy – though rumours abound as to who will be the guardians of the safety of New Oxonians."

"They make these clockwork droids sound like they are dangerous." Said Gwen squeezing in beside Jack and getting a look.

"Well they can be." Said the Doctor. "Very literal at taking orders."

"You sound like you've encountered these things before." Said Donna.

"Yes. In the 51st century oddly enough. Strange that it took 2400 years for the technology to make it to Victoria Minor." The Doctor drifted into pensive silence, his eyes far away as he took in the hissing and wheezing of this steam powered little planet. He closed his eyes for a moment. Usually he would have felt the turn of the planet below his feet, as it turned around its sun, spinning in the infinite dances of countless galaxies across space and time. Instead, his head was all white noise, television fuzz. The temporal quake had kicked up too much interference for him to clearly see things – any other time it would have been blessedly peaceful, now it was just inconvenient. He realized that his companions were all looking at him… and realized how many he was now traveling with. The TARDIS hadn't been this crowded in a long time.

"Well, we're not going to find out anything standing around here. Jack, Donna, Gwen – you start chatting up the locals, see if anything unusual has happened in the last… say 20 years or so. Martha, you're with me… we need to track down something to use as a helmic regulator. Doesn't do to be on a strange planet with a broken TARDIS."

**Kept a shine on the bar with the sleeves of our coats**

Freddie felt a warmth spread inside her as she took a final gulp of her drink. There was a reason why at some point in history it had been called _fire water_, she mused. She plunked the glass down on the worn bar and requested "Another."

"I don' think that such a wee lady should be consuming such a quantity of liquor." A deep gravely voice said behind her.

"Make that two." Freddie said giving a sideways glance to the big bear of a man who was sidling up to the bar beside her. "How're you, Neil?" she asked.

Neil and Freddie had been friends since she was in the orphanage. When Mr. Morgan brought her the toys which she would ultimately dismantle, Neil was always right there to get a play in before they met their fate. Soon enough he was dismantling them right along with her. Outside of Morgan's Mechanical Shop, Neil was Freddie's best friend.

The barkeeper placed two glasses of amber liquid on the bar with a thunk, droplets splashing out and hitting the wood, soon drying to leave a sticky sheen.

"Oh, the underground business keeps me well and busy. I hear you've got some interesting work coming down the pipeline."

Freddie started in mid gulp, nearly choking. "God, Ada has a big mouth hasn't she?"

Neil chuckled into his drink. "Actually, it was Joseph who told me… after I had asked how you were and as explanation for what he termed your 'foul mood.'"

Freddie felt the colour rise in her face, and knew at Neil's look that she couldn't pass it off on the booze. "You still have a bit of a thing for the lad, haven't you?" he asked – to which Freddie's colour heightened even more.

"No I… He's a nice fella… it just didn't work out the first time… Just when I… and he…" she spluttered. She took a gulp of her drink, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. "Joseph likes pretty girls." Neil looked at her pointedly. "I mean girls who wear dresses and can waltz through a muck pile without getting anything on them." Neil's expression didn't change. "Yeah he liked me well enough, but he always looked a touch embarrassed to be seen out in public with me. And he was always asking me to put on a corset and gown." She screwed up her nose as she said it. "And now he's got Ada anyway. Brains and beauty."

Neil sighed and tousled Freddie's hair with a big meaty hand. "Oh darlin'" he smiled. "Ada's only brains and frills… cleans up nice but beauty she ain't. Not in my books anyway." He downed the rest of his drink, slid off his stool and held a hand out to help Freddie do the same. "Now how's about you and I head back to that shop of yours and let me help you out with this droid business. Tell me what has you bothered on the way. I'd lay odds that our two heads together will turn what's ailing you into nothing at all."

Freddie smiled accepting the hand and hopping down. They left the pub arm and arm, and her steps a good deal lighter than when she'd arrived.

Some salve for the soul

"So." The Doctor started as he steered Martha in the opposite direction of the rest of his companions. "Tell me about working with UNIT. It seems to be a completely different organization now than in the days when I worked there."

Martha felt a pit in her stomach, and all the horrid memories of her stint there as a medical advisor were all knotted in it. The Doctor placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Well," she started nervously. "It really is a different organization, I suppose. New mandate and everything… offensive rather than defensive. After their experts were executed by the Slitheen at Downing Street, they adopted a preemptive strategy… anything alien is a threat and no contact is considered peaceful." The Doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise. "They completely sacked all personnel and started new. Newly formed."

The Doctor stared darkly at some point of air in between him and Martha. UNIT sounded like it was becoming more and more like pre-Canary Wharf Torchwood. Which meant he needed to know more about what happened once UNIT soldiers pulled Lucy Saxon off the Valiant. He looked at Martha closely for a moment. Her colour was pallid, she had lost a fair amount of weight, and looked very tired. Her expression right now almost matched that sad expression he had seen in the TARDIS, only this time with the anguish of having to relive the memories which were clearly tormenting her.

"What about Lucy Saxon, and the baby." He said, more in the form of a statement than a question.

Martha took a deep shuddering breath and closed her eyes. Lucy had ranted and raved about how the child in her womb made her kill Harold Saxon, the Master. Some of her episodes were so violent and filled with anger that Martha had been afraid that she would harm the baby before it could even be born. The only thing UNIT cared about… if you could call it _caring_… was the baby's safe arrival – at any cost. So they sedated Lucy to the point of oblivion until the day of the birth, and then woke her up while she was in shackles for that barbaric scene. Soon it had become clear to Martha that UNIT had no intention of finding the unfortunate child a good home.

"And that's when I called you." Martha finished.

"And how did Lucy escape UNIT, Martha? How did she know about the time quake?" The Doctor asked, now staring into her eyes. Martha stared back. She'd looked into those eyes a dozen or more time during their travels together, but the full impact of all his years had never really hit her until now. She couldn't tell him what she had done… that it was really all her fault… not yet.

"I don't know." Answered Martha, breaking away from his gaze. "I really don't know."

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by a woman's panicked scream. Both he and Martha forgot the lie hanging in the air and sprinted off towards the commotion.

**When robots attack**

"So why all the commotion about these androids?" Neil asked Freddie as they walked down the cobblestone street toward Morgan's Mechanical Shop. "I thought that these were a sure thing?"

Freddie shoved her hands in her pockets and looked down at the stones pensively, putting the accumulating concerns that had entered into her head during the last three days. "It seems to me that the androids are not especially stable. They appear to have a number of vulnerabilities that could be easily corrupted by people who might be criminally inclined."

"Really?" Neil answered, surprised. "But they're already out on the street. Does the Mayor know about this?"

"That's just the problem. I think he does, and isn't acknowledging it. I think…" Freddie paused a moment, afraid to voice her concerns. "I think it seems odd that such a massive contract was given to such a tiny little shop."

Freddie and Neil walked in silence for a little while. The street was busy, people wandering through the sooty air in and out of the shops and pubs. Freddie watched as one of New Oxford's first traffic control droids placed a ticket on a steam taxi. Suddenly, the androids arm swung out violently striking a passerby and grabbing hold of a wicker pram – the mother screaming in terror as the berserk mechanical assailant pulled the pram, infant inside, away.

Without thinking, Freddie took off after the android, Neil calling out behind her. The crowds on the street had split like the red sea, people dashing out of the android's way and then looking on in horror as they realized what it had in tow. Freddie focused on the pram, hearing the thud of Neil's heavy step at her heels. As soon as she was close enough, she grabbed hold of one edge of the pram with one hand and pulling herself close, then scooping out the now screaming baby with her free arm. Her feet still moving of their own momentum, she turned around and handed off the baby to Neil, before stumbling backwards and hitting the stones with a thud. She sat for a second, her rear and right hand stinging from the impact when a gasp of horror went up from the onlookers.

She had no time to turn around before she felt metal clamp down on her shoulder, drawing her up off her feet with its crushing grip.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: Usual plead for legal indifference applies.**

**A/N: Slow as ever with the updates. But thank-you for your patience. I pray I don't disappoint. Again, please do review. **

**The Third Wheel**

Donna sat nursing her strange tasting pint of ale. Really, it tasted like any other ale she'd had on earth (though truth be told, she was more often a Diet Pepsi kind of person), only with an underlying ashy taste. She only vaguely heard Jack and Gwen chatting up some locals at their table, mostly about clockwork droids. The words "aurora" and "light storm" pricked at her ears, reminding her of a trip to the Yukon she'd taken not long after meeting the Doctor on her unfortunate wedding day. Donna had thought before meeting the Doctor that Lance would provide the golden age of her life – marriage and stability being the highest goals she felt capable of attaining. In retrospect, she hadn't even really like Lance himself – to be honest he was a bit of a prat – rather she had fallen in love with what he represented.

Even after the Doctor had left her doorstep that Christmas Eve, he had left a more capable Donna Noble than even hours before. She had hiked the cool summer mountains of the Yukon, sipped grassy green tea in Japan, spelunked through the tunnels under Red Square, and floated lazily through Venice on a gondola. No more feeling helpless, no more resorting to bellowing to compensate for her weaknesses (well, she still bellowed, but more judiciously), and the wonders of the world in which she lived excited her more than the newest flavour of Pringles. But the fear she saw in the Doctor's eyes during those last few days in the TARDIS, desperately trying to land to save something she didn't quite understand, had brought the helplessness back hard and fast. She was now left wondering, once again, when she would finally attain stability.

Donna had seen aliens, explosions, disasters, and death, and she was terrified of someone else's fear.

Jack and Gwen were talking between themselves, the locals having left the table and likely gone to spread news of the newcomers asking strange questions.

"Sounds like the other end of a time quake to me." Said Jack into his almost empty pint. "Just no word on what, if anything, came through."

"Do you think that little girl could have come through?" Gwen asked, her eyes showing the worry she felt for the squirming infant she had last seen in Lucy's arms.

Jack frowned. "I don't think so." He said. "The gravitational forces can rip atoms apart… imagine those forces on a human adult, let alone infant. Besides, if she were here I imagine the Doctor would have picked up on it immediately."

"So the Doctor is telepathic?" asked Gwen. She'd heard bits and pieces about the strange man in the blue box, but more so than ever during the last six months. Still, she knew very little about him, and his apparent relationship with Jack.

"Well… sort of I guess. I don't really know to what extent. Only that he can sense another of his species under normal circumstances."

"And his species is…" Gwen ventured to ask.

"Not really relevant to this conversation." Jack stopped the conversation there. He didn't really feel it was his place to share all he knew about the Doctor's history, which when he thought about it was based more on myth and legend than what he had heard from the man himself. He looked across the table at Donna who was looking back with her mouth slightly open as if she wanted to say something but didn't know how. "You're awfully quiet." Not knowing Donna, he wasn't aware of how unusual this really was.

"He was terrified." She blurted out. "I don't quite understand of what… but there was a look in his eyes like he was desperate to land, but at the same time was scared of what he would find. And then when we couldn't… it was strange… like a wave of relief and then sadness washed over him…"

"Relief?" asked Gwen pointedly. "Why – ?"

Gwen was interrupted by a commotion at the door. One of the locals in the bar yelled "What is it!?"

"Quick! One of the clockwork droids has gone berserk!"

Jack, Gwen and Donna rose simultaneously, as the rest of the bar started to empty out. "Let's go." Said Jack, he and Gwen following the exodus. Donna swallowed the lump in her throat and went after them.

**Crippled**

The image of the mother sobbing, clutching her baby in her arms seared itself into Martha's mind as she and the Doctor neared the commotion. Martha ran toward them as the Doctor broke off in another direction.

"Are you alright?!" she yelled at her over the din. "I'm a doctor I can help."

The woman looked up at her with tear filled eyes. "My baby…" she whimpered. Martha looked down at the child in fear of what she might see, as images of Lucy Saxon's face flashed through her memory. The baby looked up at Martha and gurgled.

"Give her here, let's see…" the mother allowed Martha to examine the child, who sighed in relief to find nothing outwardly wrong. Her relief was cut short as a burly man nearby yelled in terror. Looking up, Martha saw the Doctor in mid-stride with his sonic screwdriver extended, blipping and fizzing in the highly charged atmosphere completely impotent against the clockwork droid who was hoisting the small figure of a woman off her feet, suspending her above the sidewalk…

The Doctor's sonic screwdriver was out in a flash as he ran toward the droid who had now lifted the young woman, her feet kicking at the air between them and the ground. The device squealed, any signal bouncing off the dense clouds of electrons in the air. He gritted his teeth as he ran faster, desperate to get closer… if only a small signal could get through he could…

Freddie felt disoriented as the ground pulled away from her feet and the droid's wrist joint whirred as it turned her to face it. She found herself staring into its clear polycarbonate head where there was nothing other than brass and springs, and the realization that there was no reasoning with her attacker was terrifying. She was vaguely aware of the crowd surrounding them, screaming, crippled by fear. Over the din she could hear Neil yelling, and another voice… coming closer… telling her to hold on. Suddenly, the droid's grip loosened and Freddie fell toward the ground again. As she fell she reached through an opening in the droid's casing and pulled out a small innocuous looking pin…

The young woman fell to the ground clutching her shoulder, the droid in two pieces – legs one way and torso the other – clicking and twitching on the ground next to her. The Doctor helped her, pale and shaking, sit up. "I'm the Doctor." He said surveying the scene and a broad grin spreading across his face, "and I would really love to know how you just did that."

**Dramatic Irony**

"I'm Freddie." Eying the pin she'd pulled from the droid's sacral joint, Freddie picked it up with the hand attached to her now one good shoulder and dropped it into the Doctor's open hand. She winced as Martha, who'd run over and started examining her shoulder before Freddie has quite come to her senses, probed the sore flesh. "And I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I work for the mechanical shop that's supposed to be maintaining these things. Well, in a few days time anyway."

"Getting a leg up on the plans like a good engineer then." The Doctor asked flipping the pin through his fingers - the pin had been the only thing holding the droid together at that joint... she was smart to have known that. He eyed the big burly man, Neil he'd introduced himself as, who hovered nearby protectively.

"More a mechanic. I wouldn't say I'm much of an engineer."

"Don't listen to her." Piped up Neil. "She's a genius, our Freddie."

Freddie let out a humph. "You don't strike me as being from around here… Doctor….?"

The Doctor gave her a toothy grin, which Freddie noticed made him seem boyish and charming while taking the attention away from the question. "Just the Doctor." He replied. "And no, I'm not… we're not from around here. Actually, my ship is broken and I need to find supplies to repair it. Though as luck would have it I seem to have run into a charming young mechanic who might be able to help me… so it's a pleasure to meet you… Freddie…?" He let the question hang in the air.

"Just Freddie." She said in echo of his answer. "Well, we don't get too many offworlders on Victoria Minor. Not exactly what you would call a hot tourist destination." She winced again as Martha gently tested the range of her shoulder. She felt oddly comfortable with Martha's ministrations, which was odd considering she was receiving medical attention from an offworlder she'd only met a few minutes ago. The young doctor's touch seemed to put her at ease, and Freddie was now feeling very calm after her frightening ordeal. "So how exactly did you come to my rescue, Doctor? Was the droid letting go of me your doing?"

"Ahh, well… I suppose it was, but by luck. The sonic screwdriver doesn't seem to get on with this atmosphere. Thank goodness I got close enough in time."

Freddie's eyes lit up immediately. "Sonic screwdriver?! I've only been off world once, next planet over… to the Morvlorian Mechanical Museum… I saw one there. They're antique! I'm amazed that you have a proper working one. Seriously though 'the Doctor', the least I can do now is invite you to Morgan's Mechanical and let you raid the inventory. You're completely welcome to it."

"Appreciate it 'just Freddie." The Doctor quipped back. "What are you planning on doing with this lot." He jerked a thumb towards the droid, whose twitching had calmed.

"I'd like to take it back to the shop and figure out what went wrong with it."

"Well, Freddie." Said Martha tying her arm off in a sling made from a bystander's headscarf. "You shoulder is not broken, or dislocated. But you have a lot of muscle damage, so you're going to have to keep it up in this for a couple of days."

"Off just in time for the party, then." Said Neil. Freddie scowled, remembering she was going to have to squeeze herself into something somewhat fashionable in a couple of nights.

"What party?" came a male voice from behind Neil. A tall dashing man, a petit dark haired woman, and a fiery redhead approached them. "I love a good party." He continued.

"Stop it." Said the Doctor, lifting a warning finger at him. The man looked hurt.

"More friends of yours?" asked Freddie. The Doctor nodded. "Well good, many hands make for light work."

**Answering to a higher power**

Neil cast his light through the tunnels of the underground, following the path of the sooty breeze that ran through them, down from above ground. He wrestled with the knot of guilt in his gut. He'd nearly seen his best friend die, while never letting on that he might have had something to do with it. What kind of man did that make him? Evil? A coward? She had saved him in that orphanage, though she never knew it. She had been his safe haven, the one who accepted him, who treated him like a person… not an overgrown Neanderthal. He hated himself for betraying all that.

He could hear the quiet_tick tick tick_ in the tunnel get louder as he approached the gap in the tunnel wall. He turned into the gap, entering a large cavern. The ticking bounced off the walls, echoing onto itself making the 3 or 4 droids and their master sound like an army.

"What news do you bring?" a tinny mechanical voice said from the shadows, clicking and ticking punctuating each word.

"It worked." Neil began. "But you nearly killed a child, and my friend."

"But the experiment was a success." The voice stated.

"Yes." Said Neil. "But you can't hurt any more people. You promised. I'll let you run your lines through here… but no more violence."

"We must have sanctuary. We must rebuild."

Neil sighed. "Yes. You can have sanctuary. You can rebuild. But please, no more hurting people."

The figure stepped out of the shadows – polycarbonate cranium covered with a dusty regency wig and the shards of a porcelain mask. "Very well, Neil. No more hurting people."


	6. Part 6

A/N: The usual plea for legal apathy applies. Thank-you all for your patience, and enjoy!

**Trigger**

_I can't decide…._

_Music pounded in her ears, only temporarily drowning out the drumming which continuously plagued her. She wrapped her arm around the red silk clad waste of the blond woman, twirling her enthusiastically about the room, but rather than dance with her she hung in her arms like a rag doll. Kissing her deeply on unresponsive lips she tossed her aside, briefly catching a glimpse of the black eye which matched her sore knuckles._

_Whether you should live or die…_

_She watched as the old man crawled out of the makeshift tent, reveling at the mongrel status she had reduced him too. He was hers now, owned like so many family pets… but anything but loyal. A wave of bitterness, like the tea she had just spat out, washed over her. Over the moon with the thrill of victory, yet angry and betrayed, loving and hating him at the same time. _

_I won't deny I'm going to miss you when you're gone…_

_It was quiet now. She peered out the window to look over the little blue-green planet that she now called her dominion. Tick tick tick… the silence was punctuated by a ticking behind her. She turned with a gasp stuck in her throat… the old man had become young again, surrounded by the others including the woman in red… they were speaking to her, but only the ticking emanated from their mouths. She put hands that weren't her own over her ears, praying that it would stop… that someone would stop him… _

_A startling crack rang out…_

Freddie woke up with a start. She screwed her eyes shut and burrowed deeper into the blankets, trying to fight off the chill from the cold sweat she had broken into. A deep soreness had settled into her shoulder and she winced as she tried to move it around a bit. The dream was an old one, something she'd experienced as a child which became less frequent as she entered into adulthood. But the excitement from yesterday must have brought it back – albeit with revisions. This time that Doctor fellow was in it, and the ticking of the clockwork droid. She shivered against the cold, and the thought of how serious the situation was.

"Are you alright?" came a voice from beside her bed.

Freddie's eyes flew open, and she tried to sit up – immediately regretting the effort.

"Argh." She screwed her eyes shut again realizing it was just Joseph. "Yeah… fine… just a bad dream." She opened her eyes again squinting against the dim daylight.

"How's the shoulder?" he asked, eyes and up appearing over the covers, and then disappearing. Freddie heard the clink of a glass, shake of a pill bottle, and water sloshing about.

"Uh… ow." Freddie responded. "It's sore." She continued. "But on the bright side, I'm not dead."

"Well, you're lucky after that stunt."

Freddie gritted her teeth and committed to sitting up this time. "Stunt?"

Joseph's face was turned down in a frown, somewhere between anger and worry. "Look, if you wanted to sabotage the Lovelaces, there are better ways to do it… but why would you want to in the first place?" He put the water down on the bedside table with a thud as he started to gear up. "I mean, geez Freddie… you'd been studying those specs for how long now? Is this what you were up to all along? You've always been a bit of a sneak but this is truly beyond even you!"

Freddie stared at him impassively, not revealing her quaking insides. Her first impulse was to strike back and hurt Joseph even more than his accusations stung her. _Oh, those Lovelaces who live on their pedestal in society, who look down on people like Mr. Morgan? Whose nepotic ways saw to it that no one else got a chance to prove themselves? And Ada herself, when did she ever seriously entertain Joseph before Morgan's shop was launched into the potentially lucrative world of government contracts? And Joseph the idiot, nipping at her heels like a puppy, and given no more thought than that by her._ With much effort, Freddie squashed those feelings down with gritted teeth, took a deep breath, and counted to ten.

"Don't you find it in the least bit odd that the New Oxford powers that be gave this tiny little shop such a massive contract for droids that we aren't equipped to handle." Freddie said with only the slightest edge to her voice. Joseph motioned to say something, but she cut him off. "You're right, I have been looking over those specs all this time, but not to _find_ something wrong. Rather, I _found_ something wrong. And that _something wrong_ is that we're being set up. And a mother, her child, my friend, and myself nearly being killed by one of those things only goes to reinforce that I'm not just being petty and paranoid!"

Joseph looked at her for a moment, his anger fading slightly. "Fine." He said, handing over a couple of tablets and the glass of water.

Freddie took the glass of water, accepting the standoff wasn't over, rather put on hold, and scowled at the tablets. "You know those make me sick. I'll deal with the sore shoulder."

**Suspicion **

Joseph stroked her pale silky hand, feeling a slight giddy tremble quake down into her fingers. He had slowly removed those fingers from their lacy prison moments ago, discarding the light blue glove on the table top between them, and raising them to brush against his lips. The owner of the tea room glared at them from the counter, clearly disapproving of such intimate displays of affection in his establishment. Joseph ceased his teasing ministrations, and covered her hand with his, raising his eyes to her face framed in blond ringlets. His heart swelled in his chest.

"So," Ada began, biting her lip. "Do you think she…" and let the question hang in the air.

"No." Joseph replied. "Well… Yes… I did." He revised, "But now, no."

He felt badly for accusing Freddie of sabotaging the Lovelaces. But she made no secret her distain and resentment of the family, so what was he supposed to think? As women on Victoria Minor went, Freddie was unusually strong willed – something which intrigued and frightened Joseph in equal measure. Ada on the other hand was Freddie writ more feminine, even if neither of them would admit their similarities. Freddie with etiquette and fashion sense – and the family wealth to back it up, Freddie would be sure to remind him.

"She makes no secret…" Ada continued, annoyed and echoing his own thoughts.

Joseph sighed, picking up her hand and giving it a light squeeze. "She's strong, willful. She doesn't like to be rebuffed. She's a genius just like you."

"She has no credentials."

_Should that matter?_ Joseph wanted to ask, but was afraid it would seem impertinent. Rather he put her hand down on the table again and looked at her earnestly. "Won't you just mention to your father that there may be a problem. Just in case? It can't hurt."

"I'll mention to my father that Freddie Saxon is trying to sabotage his good efforts."

"Ada… please."

"I bet she's in that little shop of yours, trying to find some way to pin this on my father."

"Well…" Joseph had indeed left her behind in the shop, pouring over the malfunctioned droid head to head with that strange offworlder. "She's trying to find answers."

Ada's eyes darkened, making her at once appear striking, and dangerous. "Well, she had better be careful what she does with those answers."

**More of an entrepreneur really**

The upper half of the clockwork droid lay still on the table, as the Doctor and Freddie worked head to head over it, assessing each outer component in the fashion of a post-mortem.

"So, where's your friend gone?" The Doctor looked at her curiously over his spectacles. Freddie met his eyes for a brief moment in which the Doctor saw disappointment and frustration crisscross behind them, and returned them back to her work before answering.

"Probably with Ada." She replied.

"Who's Ada?" The Doctor asked, fiddling with his sonic screwdriver attempting to get a reading. It fizzed and popped in response, and frowning he placed it back in his inside jacket pocket.

"The daughter of Baron Roderick Lovelace, inventor of this particular breed of clockwork droid."

"Inventor?"

"Yeah, there's the cheat. He really just invented the modifications for them so that they would work on Victoria Minor – all of which were secret until" – Freddie tapped the specs on her bench – "turns out all he really did was swap out some alloys for the power supply, tweak the mix for the brass in their gears, and added a processor based on an analytical engine rather than an electrical one."

"That's still very clever." The Doctor replied.

"Except the design wasn't his." Freddie's mind drifted back to her trip offworld to the museum, and seeing the massive Babbage Engine, and the analytical engine in miniature that had disappeared off her bench not long before Baron Lovelace had announced the first working clockwork droid on Victoria Minor. Anger and bitterness washed over Freddie as she focused her gaze on the smooth rounded brass encasing along the back of the droid, just above its lumbar region.

The Doctor watched as Freddie ran a fingernail along a faint seem in the casing. She slowed, finding what she wanted, and flipped the casing open revealing a series of pins, pistons, and bakelite punch cards. She leant in with some forceps and removed one of the cards.

Suddenly, the torso sprung to life, arms swinging wildly first at Freddie, then at the Doctor. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and cranked the frequency as high as he dared. Freddie forgot her sore shoulder as her hands flew to her ears. The air in the room vibrated before they heard a loud pop come from the droid's processor.

"Damnit. She was right." Freddie breathed as she straightened up, wincing as she adjusted her sling with her good arm.

Freddie picked a probe off the bench and pointed at a small bakelite box, casing cracked open by the Doctor's spluttering sonic screwdriver. Inside was a grainy chunk of black rock – the probe wavered as the magnet attracted the metal.

"Ah, a magnetic receiver, very interesting." The Doctor leaned over for a closer look.

"Yeah, Ada's been extolling the virtues of controlling the droids by magnet from a huge AI complex in New Berlin." Freddie explained. "I didn't think it could be done, but this droid is receiving a signal from somewhere."

**A different kind of CCTV**

The Baron sat in his overstuffed chair, swirling his brandy in its snifter. The first test had not gone well, ending with a droid attacking an innocent woman in the middle of the city. Thankfully, such matters of safety and maintenance were no longer in his hands, but still if the public became wary his name would surely be on their lips. He was considering what more he could do to be proactive, when he heard the pitter pat of a young boy's footsteps down the hall. He turned as, breathless and soot faced the boy entered and stood before him.

"Did you find him?" asked the Baron, voice gravely with phlegm and age. He fingered a few coins in his waistcoat pocket, waiting for the boy's answer before he decided on payment. Keeping these little urchins on the payroll helped him keep track of persons of interest, and people rarely paid them any mind as they performed their recognizance.

"Yessir." The boy said, his wide eyes glistening from the light of the fire, staring at the two clockwork droids flanking the old man's chair. " 'es with a lot of offworlders, 4 of 'em!"

"Offworlders?! What offworlders?" The Baron wheezed. Just what he needed, more complications. He levered himself out of his chair, the boy stumbling backwards to avoid being trod upon. The Baron needed to act immediately. "You!" He cried to the droids, receiving titled heads and soft ticking in reply. "Go take care of those offworlders. Now!"


	7. Part 7

**Obeying the Second Law**

The botanic gardens in New Oxford was one of the few bright places on Victoria Minor. Careful attention from the horticulturalists ensured that the brightly coloured foliage stayed free of coal dust, allowing the brilliant blues, purples, and yellows to stand out against the blacks and grays of the surrounding landscape. It reminded Jack of that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Judy Garland leaves Kansas and winds up in Oz… only from here he could still see Kansas. Neil had brought them this way, offering to show them around the city properly. Jack only half listened as Neil rattled off trivia about the local infrastructure – Jack had already exhausted anything he knew about the time quake of 20-odd years ago.

Gwen listened to their guide earnestly – she had never been on another planet before, even if this one felt in many ways like she'd just been to visit a living museum. It had taken Jack this long to let her in on his life outside Torchwood, his adventures with the Doctor… she wasn't going to waste this opportunity which might be her last. She glanced sideways at Martha and Donna, who both appeared to be lost in their own thoughts. This was the most exhilarating experience of her life, and they both looked like they wanted to go home. Gwen started to lose track of what Neil was saying about the service robots who helped tend to the botanic gardens, and began to wonder if life with the Doctor was really something she wanted to be learning more about. A small chugging contraption, belching steam and soot and wielding an excavator's bucket wheeled by with a scoop of dark mossy soil for an on-looking horticulturalist.

Nearby a crowd had gathered, surrounding a burly muscular man standing on a platform shouting through the small end of a large cone over the din of angry voices. A few curious onlookers hung back, leaning against the odd gnarly ashen tree. The crowd whooped and hollered in response to the man, and as they neared the disturbance Jack could begin to make out what was being said.

"It started out small, didn't it!" his voice cried out. "They'll just weave our clothes! shovel our dirt! sweep our floors!"

A garbled but clearly angry outcry came from the crowd, egging him on…

"Luddites." Neil grumbled. Jack gave him a questioning look. "They can't see that technology can help us here on Victoria Minor… that it has a place."

"Are you sure they aren't just concerned that technology has overstepped it's bounds?" Asked Jack, clearly playing devil's advocate. Guilt flickered behind Neil's eyes for a brief moment, before he looked up in alarm. Jack spun around to see what had caught his attention.

"But now, they aren't just taking our jobs…"

At the edges of the crowd, police officers began closing in…

"They are enforcing our laws…"

Beside each officer stood a similarly uniformed figure, each with a clear polycarbonate head…

"We are not only expected to look at them as equals…"

The crowd grew more irate with each sentence, and with the awareness that the very thing they were protesting was closing in…

"We are supposed to respect them as superiors!"

The police and their mechanical deputies rushed the crowd, and the park exploded into a melee of sticks and stones striking against flesh and plastic. Neil and Jack turned to escape the ever swelling masses when Donna screamed.

Donna watched frightened as the pandemonium grew, when suddenly she felt the grip of cold brass around her upper arm. Panic ripped through her as she realized that, as Martha and Gwen rushed to free her from her mechanical assailant, the droid was pushing all three of them into the rioting mob.

Jack sprinted toward his friends and tackled the clockwork man from behind, hoping to knock it off balance. Rather, it continued to move forward as if he were nothing more than a toddler gripping his mother's leg. More droids converged on the four, pressing them further into the crush.

"They aren't like the others!" Gwen cried above the confusion. Jack looked around… she was right. Their assailants weren't uniformed like the droids accompanying the police officers, which were systematically restraining the Luddite protesters so that the police could manacle their wrists. Everyone's heart sank when they could see the police pause their arrests to don gas masks.

The bright colours of the botanic gardens were soon veiled by a blue haze as gas canisters were tossed into the riot. The clank of metal hit right at Martha's feet and the cylinder discharged its load. Her eyes began streaming as the blue smoke ripped into her lungs, hacking coughs wracking her body as she collapsed to her knees, dizzy and nauseated. She looked over to see Jack and Gwen trying to hold each other up, only to be pushed down by a couple of masked police officers, and Donna unconscious on the ground. As her vision faded and the world spiraled into black, Martha realized that their mechanical assailants had fled, and Neil was nowhere to be seen.

**In Consideration of Magnetism**

"New Berlin." Said Freddie as the Doctor bounced a magnet in his palm.

"Where?"

"In New Berlin, about 640 kilometers from here, has just started up a facility designed to provide remote access to a massive assemblage of engines – no punch cards required."

"Using magnetic signals to provide access to their information…" the Doctor continued her thought…

"Other engine-based technology can be controlled from a central location…"

"Like clockwork droids."

The Doctor picked up a brass washer out of one of the baskets full of parts which lined the shelves of the shop, and flipped it over his fingers one by one, in the manner of a magician, as Freddie explained that Baron Lovelace was spearheading the project, calling it Artificial Intelligence. There was something about this young woman that was beginning to niggle at him. There was a familiarity about her that he was having a difficult time placing. He had tried to reach out while they were working, just in case it was indeed… but no. All he could get was white noise, as he chastised himself for seeing patterns in things which weren't there. Perhaps he'd been hanging around with humans for too long.

"What?" came Freddie's voice, breaking through his thoughts. She was looking at him puzzled, and he realized she'd finished her story and he'd been staring right through her.

"Sorry, nothing." But he just couldn't shake that… "You suddenly reminded me of someone I once knew."

Before Freddie could react, the shop doors swung open and Joseph burst in with Ada drifting in behind him.

"The park…" Joseph said almost breathlessly. "You should've seen it… dozens of police, with dozens of droids just arrested a mob of nearly a hundred Luddite protestors."

"Looks like some of your new friends were among them." Ada eyed Freddie coolly. "Don't tell me you're becoming a Luddite sympathizer just to undermine my family's reputation."

The Doctor watched as anger surged across Freddie's eyes, and her hands balled into tight fists. After a moment of seething, Freddie walked toward the dissected droid lying on the workbench, picked up the magnet and its casing, and handed it to Ada.

Ada held the shattered magnet in her gloved palm, the black flecks working their way into the fibres of the fine lacey fabric. She looked up at Freddie, surprised. "Where did you get this?"

Freddie cocked a thumb towards the droid. "Out of that." Both women held each other's gaze, each understanding the implication of the innocuous lump of black rock.

Ada's eyes widened with confusion. "Bu-... But this wasn't in the original design. Thi-… This is still highly experimental."

Freddie gently took the magnet and casing back and set it slowly on the bench beside her. Both women looked each other in the eye once more, this time realizing that neither was trying to undermine the other.

"Look." Freddie started, speaking slowly and calmly. "I know I've made no secret of what I think of your father's… ethics. But I promise you, I have no desire to drag your name through the mud over this. Please, if he was the one who implemented this modification… we need to get him to stop."

Ada had opened her mouth to speak, initially in anger, but something in the way Freddie spoke to her made her stop. She simply nodded.

**Snooping at the Read Baron's**

Neil sat tensely on the edge of the settee in the Baron's den, wringing his hands nervously. The Baron thumped his thick fingers on the glossy lacquered surface of his desk, wetly sucking the end of his cigar as he peered at Neil through the pungent blue smoke. "What happened, boy?" the Baron wheezed. "Why did one of my creations suddenly up and attack and innocent young woman and her child? And then proceed to attack the very woman assigned to maintain them?"

Neil looked down at his grease-stained fingernails, clearing his throat. "Um... sir... I don't know."

"You don't know!?" The Baron exploded, sitting up in his chair, brandishing the barely smoking stub. "You, who I trusted to make these modifications, who I trusted to carry out my experiments, don't know!?"

"No sir... perhaps it was a bad signal from... um... New Berlin. Bad magnet box maybe..." Neil spoke lowly, grasping at straws, waiting for his words to halt the man's face from becoming as flushed as his was paled.

The heavy study door creaked open slowly, and Ada's face emerged first, eyes wide and staring at her father as if she couldn't possibly know him. She had heard his outburst from the other side, breathing out an unconsciously held breath as she leaned her now hot forehead against the cool wood of the door that had muffled the encounter within. Joseph had put a comforting hand on Ada's shoulder, and the Doctor couldn't help but notice Freddie tense slightly as she observed this.

"Father? Is it true?" Ada asked in disbelief. "Did you cause this?"

The Baron's complexion grew pallid and hollow as he focused on his daughter, barely noticing the other visitors filing in behind her. "Darling, it's not what you think."

"So you're not trying to control traffic droids using a magnetic signal generated at New Berlin?" Freddie piped up. "Causing them to attack defenseless women and children?"

"It was an accident!" the Baron cried, as Ada burst into tears running to his side and throwing her arms around her father's neck.

"And you didn't use those same droids to have my friends arrested?" fumed the Doctor, glancing at Neil - the last person he'd seen them with.

"I just needed to get them out of the way for a moment... before everyone found out what I was doing... I can explain!"

"Oh I think you'd better." the Doctor responded, his voice low and menacing, causing the room to go silent and the air to still.

The Baron stared at the Doctor mouth agape, halfway between asking him who he was, and blurting out his entire story. He quavered on this point for seconds which seemed like hours before he finally found his voice.

"Yes, I was experimenting with controlling the traffic droids using the AI facility in New Berlin." He said, as authoritatively as he could. He could feel this strangers eyes boring into him, accusing and judging. He didn't know who this man was, and was beginning to get annoyed with how intimidated he was by him. "I charged Neil with the duty of performing the modifications." Freddie's eyes widened slightly, at the mention of Neil. She wasn't sure whether to feel betrayed, or impressed.

"And you put maintenance in the hands of Morgan's Mechanical Shop... why? To set us up for a fall when the experiments got totally out of hand? Like yesterday?" Freddie accused.

The Baron's heart sank with the realization that he was going to have to come clean about something he should have a long time ago.

"I used my leverage with the Mayor to put someone in charge of maintenance who I knew would understand the more complex aspects of this machinery." He started. "Someone who had the idea right around the same time I did."

Everyone in the room looked at Freddie, including the Doctor, but all Freddie was aware of was herself, the Baron, and her heart swelling with vindication. The Baron continued, addressing her directly. "I really don't know what caused that one droid to go berserk. I'm only glad that you were there to prevent the situation from becoming worse."

"Which is why these experiments need to stop." The Doctor said, drawing the room's attention to him. "Baron this technology can be very dangerous. I know. I've seen it in action." The Baron saw danger in the Doctor's eyes, and felt inexplicably as though he should agree with him - call off the experiments now before whatever danger lie within was visited upon Victoria Minor.

"Wait a minute." Freddie interjected. The Doctor looked to her with surprise. "It really isn't a bad idea."

"What!?" exclaimed the Doctor.

"It isn't a bad idea... the scale is just way too large for a start, and there aren't enough fail-safes." Freddie explained. "We can simply demagnetize the transmitters until we get the internal engine coding stable, and add an over-ride for corrupted incoming signals." She was smiling now, enjoying what felt like a good plan that would not only further the Baron's research, but her own aspirations as an engineer.

The Doctor looked her in the eye, and although he stood at least a meter away from her, she felt like it was mere centimeters. "Freddie, you don't understand. Clockwork droids are not by their nature stable. That's why they are obsolete in this time. Better technology can be found." Freddie looked at the Doctor quizzically. _In this time_... what an odd thing to say. Freddie realized that she was staring into the Doctor's eyes, and it felt as though the room... or was it the world... was rotating around them. She took a deep breath and shook her head. Time to get back to her senses - a slip of the tongue and a dizzy spell did not an impossibility make.

"No Doctor, I think I do understand. And I'm willing to help the Baron carry out these experiments safely and responsibly. Now let's go get your friends out of jail."


	8. Part 8

**Pondering Heredity**

Freddie stood in front of the mirror, holding her hair in a pile on her head, sucked her stomach in and threw her shoulders back. She looked at the woman staring back, a vision in periwinkle silk, with ivory lace peeking out from under its decolletage. Around her neck was a fine silver chain, suspending a pewter locket which lay cool against her skin. Freddie looked at the woman in the mirror, and wondered where she was inside her.

The Doctor had been quite insular as they collected his friends from lockup, the Baron apologizing for the misunderstanding and extending them all invitations to the Mayoral ball. Jack had accepted enthusiastically as the Doctor glowered - clearly not happy but with no intention of leaving. Back at the shop, Freddie gave him the run of the inventory, uneasily standing by as he collected seemingly random parts, ignoring Freddie's questions about what exactly he was trying to put together. She finally retreated to her workbench, listening to the bell clanging against the door as his friends exited the building. She thought he had left too, when a hand suddenly touched her shoulder causing her to jump. She looked up at the Doctor, who was looking back with concern, and maybe even a bit of sadness. "Just be careful, okay?" he asked. The words came without the power that she had witnessed in the Baron's den... rather it was a plea. Freddie nodded and simply said "Okay." And the Doctor walked out of the shop and into the streets of New Oxford.

Freddie sat at her bench, tinkering with the miniature engine that the Baron had returned to her as an official peace offering between them. Perhaps if the Doctor came to the ball, or at least stayed for a little while longer, she could make it do something interesting and give it to him as a similar sort of offering. Finally she gave up, locking the shop and walking up to her room, where she found the dress draped on her bed and a note from Mr. Morgan that made her smile and sent the colour creeping into her cheeks. It was time for a test run.

Freddie wriggled into corset and petticoats, difficult without the aid of a ladies maid, tired from the exertion by the time she surveyed the finished product in the mirror. She let her dark hair tumble down onto her shoulders, as she sat in front of her dressing table mirror, elbows propped on the cheaply varnished wood, he fingers daintily opening the delicate locket around her neck. The outside of the locket was decorated with a circle motif - some concentric, others forming long trails along an invisible arc. It reminded her a little of a watch schematic, or maybe a solar chart. Inside the locket were two pictures - not least of all because this was the only thing, save for the piece of paper that bore her name, that accompanied her on the doorstep of Morgan's Mechanical Shop - she believed to be her parents. The woman was fair as Freddie was dark, but the resemblance was there - the well placed cheekbones, the fine features, the arch of her eyebrows, the milky skin. But the man... the man looked nothing like her. Freddie tried to imagine something in his eyes, tried to relate to his smug gaze, but nothing came. If the man wasn't her father, who could he be? If he was her father, why did they not look alike?

Freddie's thoughts were broken by the soft tread of someone coming up the stairs. She closed the locket and turned toward the doorway as Joseph poked his head in. He immediately blushed as he saw her dress, and the soft dark curls of her hair raining down on her shoulders. From her chair, Freddie gestured to the corner of the bed, inviting him to sit there, which he did awkwardly.

"Uh, you look great, Freddie."

Freddie laughed. "Yeah, you wouldn't believe how much work it was to get into this thing... I can only imagine how much work it is to get-" and she stopped the statement, suddenly realizing with embarrassment the direction it was taking. "Er... thanks." She finished.

Joseph cleared his throat self-consciously. "Er... Anyway... Freddie. I wanted to apologize... for everything. For trying to make you something you weren't. For not appreciating what you are. And most of all, for accusing you for something you clearly didn't do." He looked into her grey eyes earnestly. "Will you forgive me."

Freddy smiled warmly, and leaning forward placed a hand on his. "I forgive you."

Joseph smiled back and stood quietly, turning toward the door and taking his leave - both feeling better about their lives on Victoria Minor.

**Confessions**

Martha walked into the console room of the TARDIS, her maroon dress rustling as she entered. She'd been watching the Doctor work on the helmic regulator for some time, something with which he was evidently having much difficulty. He'd been working at it since they'd left that shop, the Doctor quiet and grim the whole time, scowling over his spectacles. When they busied themselves the following day getting ready for the ball, he merely shrugged and ignored them. To Martha, it was clear that the Doctor was in a bad mood - but it also occurred to her that a "bad mood" could also mean "sensing imminent disaster." The Doctor looked up as Martha entered.

"So, I take it you're not coming with us." Martha said as she approached, looking at the brass contraption he'd made to inexplicably hover in a well he'd built into the console. "I hope that means you're not going to take off while we're out having a little fun?"

The Doctor looked up from the console, clearly missing the joke. "Oh, I have no intention of leaving, Martha. Not when there's still a mystery to be gotten to the bottom of."

"What mystery?" Martha asked. "You found out the droid attacks were just an accident."

"Not the droids, no. Though," the Doctor reconsidered. "I do think there is something still more to that. No, I mean the mystery of Lucy Saxon's child." He pulled off his spectacles, levelling his full gaze at Martha, who's heart had just started to beat harder.

"The time quake must have swallowed her up. Nothing could have survived it." She said, echoing Jack's statements from earlier in their investigation.

"Perhaps. But it doesn't explain why Lucy was there, at that exact moment, and put the child down in that exact spot." The Doctor thumped the console with his index finger, and Martha jumped. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "It also doesn't explain how she escaped a UNIT hospital to get there."

Before she could control it, Martha's eyes filled with tears which immediately spilled down her cheeks. She tried to speak, but it came out as a sob. Soon her shoulders were shaking as the Doctor wrapped his arms around them, Martha sinking into his embrace and the flood of grief and guilt pouring forth.

"It's my fault." She said, muffled into the shoulder of his jacket. "You weren't there. UNIT wanted the child, and negotiations with Torchwood were failing. I left her restraints just loose enough that she could get free." Fresh tears stained the Doctor's collar, and he continued to hold her tightly until she could speak again. "It's my fault that Lucy Saxon is dead. And worse, it's my fault that an innocent baby is also dead."

The Doctor pulled away from Martha, and she thought for a moment that she was being pushed away. But his hands remained on her shoulders, and he looked her right in the eye - sympathetic and understanding. "If it's any consolation, Martha Jones," he said squeezing her shoulders gently. "I for one only think she's missing."

Something on the console began to beep. The Doctor let Martha go and went over to investigate. Martha wiped her eyes and followed.

"What is it?"

The Doctor looked at his new brass gizmo, puzzled. "Well, because of the nature of this planet's technology I had to come up with something that would interface the electronic components of the TARDIS with the mechanical components available to me - magnets." He said, spinning the new helmic regulator like a top as it hovered in its well which Martha now realized was lined with magnets. "Now, because the TARDIS is sealed off from the electron dense atmosphere outside, this all works relatively well. But, it is still sensitive to extraneous magnetic signals, like this one." The console beeped again, a computer screen began scrolling through characters that Martha couldn't decipher.

"But you said that the Baron had shut down the... what was it... AI facility? Right?"

The Doctor nodded. "Exactly. Which begs the question... what signal is this picking up?"

**The Complications of the Third Law**

Neil gripped the demagnetizer in his hand as he stood before the clockwork droid in the cracked porcelain mask. "It's only until we get everything working properly." He pleaded. "It's only to keep the people on this planet safe."

"We must rebuild."

His hands were sweaty, and icy water dripped from the cavern ceiling down the back of his shirt, making him shiver on top of the quiver of adrenaline he was already fighting. The signal generator was just behind this droid... maybe he could rush him and demagnetize it before the others could get near. He could hear the ticking approaching from caverns beyond.

"Please." He pleaded. But he was only met with the gazeless mask and clear polycarbonate head.

"We must rebuild."

Neil summoned his courage and rushed the droid. He hit its brass frame, covered in a tattered blue silk jacket with dirty lace spilling from under the sleeves. The droid stumbled backwards, and Neil held out the demagnetizer, aiming it at the signal generator. But the others were too close behind. He felt four mechanical claws grasp his arms, and the world faded to black as his head hit the hard granite floor. 


	9. Part 9

**Everyone Loves a Party**

The greyscale landscape of New Oxford was for one night a year bathed in the colour and light of the Mayoral ball. The Mayor's residence sat on a hill overlooking the town, a great stone building with a massive outer stair case ascending to the grand darkly stained double doors. Even more spectacular was the torch lined bridge over the river, copper salts and lithium chloride added to their flames to give dancing greens, blues, and reds.

Vibrant colours of taffeta, silk, and linen rustled up the staircase to the Mayor's residence, punctuated by black grosgrain and crisp white collars. Freddie grasped Mr. Morgan's arm as they made their way up shiny cobblestones, dampened to keep down the coal dust that would otherwise mar the wardrobe of the guests. Joseph had gone ahead to collect Ada – and they were no doubt trailing behind in the attempt to arrive fashionably late.

Gwen walked at Jack's elbow, taking in the spectacle of the event, and marvelling at the fact that in the past three days she had traveled to another planet, been attacked by clockwork droids, arrested by the local police, and was now attending a fancy-dress party. They were close enough to hear the music, some sort of stringed symphony was playing, and to Gwen the music sounded strangely familiar.

"Wait a minute, Jack, is that??" she asked in astonishment.

Jack chuckled. "I believe it is. I guess a few from the 1980s made it through here as well."

_Rhys would never believe_ – the thought stopped with the sudden formation of a pit in her stomach. It was the first time that her husband had entered her mind the entire time she was there. Jack seemed to sense her discomfort, turning to look at her.

"You okay?" he asked.

Gwen took a deep breath before answering. "Yeah. Just reflecting, that's all."

"It's intoxicating. Traveling with him." Jack mused, looking ahead to the crowd and not at her. "The sights, the danger... it becomes fun... in the beginning... because you know that no matter how bad it gets, he'll always be there to save you."

"And then?" Gwen asked, glancing back at Donna and Martha. They were all dressed up, having made use of the surprisingly vast and varied TARDIS wardrobe. Gwen had chattered on as they readied themselves - but while Donna and Martha smiled fondly at her enthusiasm and looked knowingly at one another, she could sense a weariness in them... a deep ennui that seemed to have settled into their bones.

"Then you find out that he won't... can't... always be there." Jack paused, seemingly to swallow a lump in his throat. "And then you move on."

They both let the conversation drop there, as they began to ascend the great staircase into the Mayor's residence, bathed in the golden light of burning paraffin. Gwen looked up as she became aware of someone moving against the crowd towards them – it took her a moment to recognize it was the Doctor dressed in a tuxedo.

"I thought you weren't going to come, Doctor." Jack said.

"Well... the helmic regulator is just about sorted... and there's the small matter of unaccounted for magnetic signals, potentially dangerous clockwork droids, and a big ol' crowd of people." The Doctor's eyes shone mischievously. "So I thought I'd better make an appearance."

"So you're saying that we should keep our eyes peeled?" Gwen asked.

"And your ears..." the Doctor added, circling behind to Donna and Martha, coming between them with his arms linked with theirs. "But no reason not to try and have a bit of fun..." Looking at Donna who's usual effervescence had been dulled by the events of the past few days. "Just keep your wits about you."

"Alright, you heard the man." cried Jack. "Play safe, kids!"

As the group of offworlders entered the golden light of the Mayor's mansion, and became engulfed in the wave of festivities, the Doctor closed his eyes against the incoherent noise of the crowd, and the white noise that had been ever present in his mind since he'd arrived. Somewhere in there, there was _something –_ a twinge of cosmic angst that he still hadn't yet shrugged off. He thought about those hours in the TARDIS, trying to land on Earth, the sparks flying from the console as the machine jolted and shuddered like a beast possessed. The feeling wasn't the same... yet it was similar... perhaps hidden by the highly charged atmosphere of the planet, but clearly there. And he was left again with that slight feeling of dread that made him hesitate to embrace what it was – something that was alien, even to him... something that had never happened before in all the history of the universe.

"Oy! Spaceman?" Donna's voice bellowed through the noise and haze and he opened his eyes again, realizing they were holding up the crowd. "Alright?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah of course. Just fine." He answered. "No need to shout, Donna, I'm right here." And he burst into a big toothy grin, moving inside. Donna trailed him reluctantly – she didn't believe him, and worse yet she'd seen that look all too recently.

**Not a Toy**

_Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick..._

Neil's head rang with the clockwork din, as he felt the side of his face against damp rock and dirt, and this body against the jagged rock of the cavern. It was dark, and as he felt his eyes open he was distressed as he saw only solid black. He hoped it was dark. He hoped that whatever that thing had done to him hadn't made him go blind.

His worry was put to rest when a blurry light was cast from the back of the cavern, but replaced with a new horror when it illuminated the source of all the noise. Thousands and thousands of glinting brass men, row on row, so many more than that first dozen or so that he'd found tarnished and decaying in the cavern 10 years ago. His heart sank – this was all his fault. From his spot against the cavern wall, Neil could see the torn blue coat and broken face of the droid he had repaired – as if it had been one of his and Freddie's orphanage toys – moving against the backdrop of the magnetic signal generator. Suddenly, the brass men sprung to life, and Neil slumped limply again, hiding that he was conscious. Each row about faced on turn, filing out of the cavern past Neil's quivering form. It was a vast clockwork droid army, and they were on the move.

**The Dance**

The crowd swirled like a colourful kaleidoscope to the music of the string symphony perched upon the second floor landing that overlooked the great central hall of the Mayor's mansion. Freddie drifted through the crowd, dazzled by the light and sound, her stomach all butterflies anticipating the moment that the mayor would make his announcement, launching Mr. Morgan, Joseph, and herself into the limelight of New Oxford's engineering elite. Not only would they be announced as the caretakers of the city's newest technological marvel, but she would be announced as a partner in the further development of it.

Across the room she spotted the Doctor, and her heart warmed as his gaze caught hers. She wanted the opportunity to say goodbye to him on good terms. While she'd only just met him a few days ago, she felt the need for his approval... his blessing of her future work... as if she needed to prove herself somehow to him. The Doctor made his way through the crowd, took her hand, and with a gentlemanly bow asked her to dance.

"Quite the party." The Doctor leaned in speaking close to Freddie's ear, so that she could hear him over the music – something very similar to a waltz only a bit more freeform.

"Happens only once a year." Freddie said back, as they began to drift into the centre of the crowd. "One of the few times this little place doesn't look cold and grey." She paused for a moment, unsure of what to say next. "Look. I just want to assure you that we'll be very careful." She decided to reword that. "I'll be very careful, when I'm working with those droids. None of these insane public test runs that Lovelace and Neil were running."

"That's what's worrying me." Said the Doctor. "You said they shut down that facility in New Berlin, right?"

"Yes, the Baron sent word and all signals were suspended immediately. Why?"

"There are still signals coming from somewhere. My... ship... has been picking them up. But New Berlin is so far away even if it were still operational the signals wouldn't be this strong. I think there's something nearby that might have been overriding whatever the Baron was trying to do."

Freddie shivered. "So that droid going berserk may not have been because of the Baron."

"No."

A pit formed in her stomach as she realized the implications of this. "Which means that whoever..."

"Or whatever..."

"Was behind it may still be out there."

"That's right."

Freddie felt deflated and slumped a little in the Doctor's arms. "Oh." The music suddenly sounded sinister in her ears, and the crush of dancing couples claustrophobic. She pushed away from the Doctor slightly and looked up at him, "What should we do?"

The Doctor looked down at the worried face of his dancing partner, but his gaze was drawn further down by something else. A small pewter disc that caught the golden light of the paraffin lamps, its patterns of circles catching his eye as being something all too familiar. His hearts felt like they'd stopped, and his blood ran cold. How could he have been so close all this time, and not known. He cursed his dulled senses. "What?" Freddie asked.

"You said you'd been off world once... when was that?" he asked.

"Years ago... I think I was 14? Mr. Morgan had helped arrange a trip... for the older kids in the orphanage."

"Orphanage..." the Doctor echoed. "The one you grew up in." He concluded.

"Yes. That's right." Freddie answered, wondering why it seemed so important. Wondering why something in the Doctor's eyes was shaking her to the core, as if her soul wanted to run and hide from him.

"And where did you get the locket?" He asked. The room felt like it was whirling around them, the dancing couples spinning on a spinning planet, spinning around a spinning galaxy...

"F-from M-Mr. Morgan." Freddie stammered. "For my 20th birthday."

"And have you opened it?"

Freddie looked at him confused.

"Have you opened it?!" the Doctor exclaimed, causing her to jump. She wanted to get away but his grip was tight, and the crowd around them was dense and happily oblivious to their exchange.

"Of course I have!" Freddie cried. "Inside there are pictures of my parents. It's the only other thing that Mr. Morgan found with me."

"So you were found... he didn't know your parents?" the Doctor pressed.

"No!" Freddie exclaimed, now frustrated. These were all things she'd put out of her mind. The stories of bright lights and spectacular auroras that surrounded her arrival on Mr. Morgan's doorstep. The beat of the music seemed to pound in her ears... even though the symphony had no percussion. "I don't know! Why do you want to know?"

"Do you know anything else about how you got here?" the Doctor asked, more gently.

"No..." Freddie hesitated. "Just that there was a note... with my name on it..."

"Which was?"

"Winifred." Freddie responded in angry sarcasm, her heart pounding like drums in her ears.

"Winifred what?" the Doctor's voice was grave and halting – as if he needed the answer, but at the same time didn't want it.

Freddie swallowed the lump in her throat. "Saxon... my name is Winifred Saxon."

The music had halted, and the crowd had begun to thin; the dancers looking for new partners for the next set, leaving the Doctor and Freddie standing in the middle of the dance floor. The Doctor looked stricken, as if some deep dark memory had been ripped from his soul and brought before his eyes – which suddenly seemed impossibly old. Freddie slowly pushed herself away, trying to rip her gaze away from his, but in a moment of light-headedness she nearly stumbled. The Doctor caught her under the elbow and held her up, guiding her to the balcony outside and seating her on a bench, muttering something about excess telepathic energy. Freddie squeezed her eyes shut - her ears were still pounding, and her head rushed, but the coolness of the bench and the cool night air was beginning to calm her. She opened her eyes and saw the Doctor looking at her with concern. He looked out into the night sky, black and starless, and looked back at her.

"Do you want to know more..." he hesitated before continuing. "About how you got here?"

Shivering and unable to speak, Freddie swallowed and nodded.

But before the Doctor could say anything, there were screams out in the streets. Marching in unison, as if under the control of a single mind, an army of clockwork droids approached, their brass bodies glinting in the torchlight.


End file.
